Bitcoin Forum

can we literally use the cheapest lowest powered cpu we can find ?

Yes.
My rigs are on  Celeron's G1820.
No problems.. ;-)

i think there can be some cpu limitation with many gpu but i'm not sure, i see that with my gaming rig i have better result, but it can be perhaps the motherboard that need to handle multiple gpu

still the difference is negligeable so i would avoid spending more

Anything that's somewhat recent will work. I usually shoot for celeron or better with Intel or a Phenom or better with AMD (Athlon or Sempron would probably work just fine). The only issue with really old cards is they may not have the lanes to handle 5 PCI slots. Your motherboard has them but the CPU doesn't know what do with them because it's so old. Still you can easily find a suitable CPU for around $20 on eBay. No need to spend more than that.

In my case I'd prefer to install used Intel i7/Xeon AVX/AVX2 AES  with HT series in my rigs. Perhaps, all of us just would want to build an universal one rig. And for some algo (like ZEC in the beginning) CPUs like I have mentioned would be more preferable than the cheapest/weakest ones.

No, it's not absolutely a good idea, especially, when new coin is released and miner is not optimized so well,
also as amph said, depends how many gpus you'd like to use, there will be a limitation what cpu can handle.
But if you want to make a minirig e.g. two cards, you can use that cpu.

IMHO, there's not point investing more than 40$ in a CPU, hence the celerons work just fine. On my rigs, CPU is barely used.

Also installing i7s and the like will just up the wattage (even if it's just 10-15 Watts).

Unless you plan using the hardware for other things, just get the cheapest Celerons, they'll work just fine for mining. Also, new coins usually drop CPU mining rather quickly anyway so I don't get the point of purchasing CPUs that cost as much as a good PSU, which is far more important.

Just my 2cts, I guess everybody's got their preference  ;)

wrong  but only some of the time. one or 2 setups  go with the ones below

a big farm  with 100 setups go cheaper  pentium or celerons



the best choice is an intel  6400t or a 6500t

used for about 140 to 160

older boards  an intel 4670t or  4460t

ebay has plenty used pulls good sellers


4460t
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core-i5-4460T-Quad-Core-1-90GHz-Haswell-CPU-5-00-GT-s-6MB-SR1S7-FCLGA1150-/391630333189?

4670t
http://www.ebay.com/itm/INTEL-CORE-I5-4670T-SR14P-2-3GHz-6Mb-5GTs-QUAD-CORE-45W-LGA1150-CLEAN-TESTED-/322338168386?

6400t
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core-i5-6400T-Quad-Core-2-20GHz-Skylake-CPU-8-00-GT-s-6MB-SR2L1-FCLGA1151-/361835402191?


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core-i5-6500T-2-50-GHz-Processor-6M-Cache-2-50-GHz-SR2L8-REFURBISHED-/112212307073?

Just take the cheapest, that's still that you won't have to take into account in your ROI. The limitations will be somthing like 1-2% at most.

Resale value of CPUs are good and they can sometimes mine for profit. Snag a used high-end platform (Like x79+i7 3960x, Xeon E5 etc), profit and sell again at a good price.

Amd Zen should slaughter Intel prices very soon

I made a lot on my cpu's  on days one and two of the zec mining.

But a big setup with a ton of rigs  the celeron and pentium cpus are okay.

Doesnt matter at all.
I have few rigs with pentium 4!!!! on 775 socket with ddr1 memory and 4 GPUs running very well and stable.
you need 2 cores and HT for multi GPUs, rest doesnt matter

These CPU have low power consumption. but they are quite expensive, at least more expensive than the Celeron ones.